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Facilitating Across Difference
Facilitators: Andy Raingold, Roz Bird, Sarri Bater & Declan D’arcy
This course is about transforming inclusion and bringing more systemic awareness to your life and facilitation. It will help you to be more inclusive and care for the needs of people who identify and experience life in very different ways. When you are in groups, either as a facilitator or participant, do you sometimes have the feeling that something is being missed? Do you notice certain people being a bit left out or excluded from the process, with difficult experiences and emotions only being expressed after the group disperses? Do you notice certain experiences being prioritised or assumed to be true for the whole group? Do you believe that these often relate to deeper systems of power inequalities – but you are not sure how to bring more consciousness to them? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this course may be for you.
Event time: Mon 11th Sep 2023 at 10:30am - Sun 17th Sep 2023 at 5:00pm
Through experiential learning, we will bring awareness to facilitating with an identity and difference lens and the relationship between the personal and the systemic. We will reveal power dynamics that separate and learn capacities that reconnect. You will leave with new understandings, skills, embodied experience and greater confidence to apply this learning to group settings – enhancing your ability to create meaningful change.
We will learn tools and skills to support us to deepen and strengthen the practice of transforming inclusion as we contribute to the world we want to live in. Practice will include:
- Facilitation skills
- Ways of communicating across difference
- Ways of working that respond to people’s apparently conflicting lived experiences, which are determined by social inequalities
- Applying tools and frameworks around identity and power into your life and work
- Ways of reconnecting with and as part of the natural world.
Course Outcomes
Previous course participants have said that they have come away from the course with:
- “Facilitation structures, frameworks and tools that can be used in a variety of contexts”
- “Learning in a very deep and experiential way, rather than a theoretical way, all the complex ways in which power shows up in our systems, and how to create more interconnectedness”
- “A greatly increased awareness of the diverse contexts through which people arrive together and my role as facilitator to enable engagement accordingly”
- “An awareness of peoples on the margins and making spaces more inclusive”
- “Ways of acknowledging and catering for difference without creating division”
- “Experience of creating a safe enough container for groups”
- “Tools to support and listen to others better (e.g. my friends/colleagues/family)” / “How to communicate compassionately and inclusively”
- “Confidence”
- “A desire to ground more of my facilitation through nature connection as a wealth of powerful experiential practices”
- “Inspiration”
Our Impact
This is the impact of our transforming inclusion course in 2022…
- 95% of participants developed skills and techniques to develop their facilitation
- 90% of participants gained an increased awareness of their relationship to systemic issues
- 90% of participants felt supported to bring a power and privilege lens to their life & work
- 90% of participants deepened their own connection to the web of life
What Our Participants Say
“An experiential exploration of ways of creating personal and systemic change that we need to create regenerative, fair and just communities”
“I am taking away a greatly increased awareness of the diverse contexts through which people arrive together and my role as facilitator to enable engagement accordingly.”
“I feel that a lot of my self-doubt has lifted and I’m ready to give it a go - previously I was too scared to facilitate. Now I have a framework and tools I can use and I feel infinitely more confident.”
“Immersive, transformative connection. Breaking down power structures and addressing disconnection - or starting too!”
BOOK NOW TO SECURE YOUR PLACE
OUR TRAINING COURSES WERE HEAVILY OVER-SUBSCRIBED IN 2022, SO EARLY BOOKING IS RECOMMENDED
ANDY RAINGOLD
As Co-Founder and Director of Change in Nature, Andy supports people and organisations to make meaningful action in this pivotal time. He is a facilitator, coach, speaker, environmental campaigner and social entrepreneur with a wealth of experience leading people through transformation. As Executive Director of the Aldersgate Group for over seven years, he worked in the corridors of power with CEOs, Government Ministers and thought leaders to drive environmental change. As well as hosting talks, workshops and retreats in the UK on nature, purpose and leadership, he has run a 2 month programme with indigenous communities in Namibia and a 2 week retreat for a "nomadic classroom" in the wilds of Sweden. He has written for the Guardian and been interviewed on BBC Newsnight, The Sunday Times, BBC Radio 4, The Independent and Guardian Environment Podcast.
ROZ BIRD
Roz has found huge richness in working with and in groups all her adult life; from communities of migrants recently arrived in the UK, to communities in the townships of South Africa, from junior school students, to learning groups for life and executive coaches, from housing cooperatives and cohousing groups, to volunteer communities, from activists and grass roots organisations, to language learners. She is a facilitator, trainer, mediator, activist and member of Navigate, a cooperative of facilitators working for social change. She feels our times calling us to live boldly by our most dearly held values, to find new and better ways to work effectively and collaboratively, and to connect with each other and the world around us. She finds it deeply meaningful and inspiring to work with so many people who are striving for more equitable, compassionate societies.
SARRI BATER
As a scholar-practitioner in Conflict Transformation, Sarri holds a consciousness of nonviolent communication (NVC) as a foundation of her approach. Sarri's practice goes beyond political and technical engagement with conflict, to include deeper spiritual and philosophical resources for moving from paradigms of violence to paradigms of peace. Sarri has a passion for the relationship between personal transformation and transforming systemic and structural violence. She also specialises in ‘identity and difference’ conflict. Sarri is committed to learning, embodying and developing re-humanising cultures, practices and systems as an alternative to existing systems for human organising. For 25 years she has lived and worked in Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Europe, the UK and Northern Ireland, with diverse engagement in the field. She holds a First Class Honours Degree in Peace Studies, an MSc with distinction in Transitional Justice, and an LLM in Human Rights, and training in many other processes and practices.
DECLAN D’ARCY
Declan is an artist-activist, cultural antagonist and group facilitator. He is committed to the transformative power of honest conversations and vulnerability as potent tools for social change. Declan has trained and received mentorship in a wide range of facilitation methods and practices to support personal and social transformation. He is a trained cultural anthropologist, specialising in issues of power, empire and coloniality. His work is rooted in a vision of queer decolonised cultures, and place-based earth-connected communities and livelihoods. He is an Associate Fellow of St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, an alumnus of the Deep Adaptation Programme and co-facilitator of the 2019 Refugee Allies programme. His work currently focuses on building place-based intergenerational community and mentorship, and community-building purpose-inspiring programmes for young adults.
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